This past weekend I was excited to get out of the house and take some more snapshots with my ‘new’ Hawk-Eye box camera. For good measure I also brought along my Minolta Autopak 700 rangefinder.

It was a super-bright sunny day, one of those bright-blue-sky-hard-shadows days, that mean sunny-16, aka EV+15 for the camera exposure. So my Hawk-Eye was loaded with some ISO 100 film which I figured could handle being overexposed and would also be ok if there were some clouds later.

I picked up my sister and we set out to visit a small waterfall that we’d read about. It was supposed to be an all-but-unknown yet very easily-accessable site.

Trail, Trees, Falls

When we arrived, we discovered that the trail was not long but it was a little difficult, and involved some hiking through the woods, and some slightly steep ups and downs. I was completely unprepared of course, wearing simple sandals — I had not even thought to bring my safety hiking sandals with the good treads and the ankle support. Also, someone else forgot to invent them.

Still, after the anticipation and the drive and all, we pressed on. And of course, I managed to trip and send myself flying. I remember as I started going over, very briefly thinking “Oh shit! The cameras!” but there was no chance to do anything about it.

I had been carrying 80-year-old Hawk-Eye in my hand, while the Minolta was around my neck on a strap. Then the Hawk-Eye was off doing some travelling of its own: first completely airborne, but then hitting the ground, it started rolling end over end a little ways down the path. The Minolta meanwhile, tethered around my neck, just swung outwards and met the hard ground face-first, a split second before I did nearly the same thing.